Mediatisation of Propaganda: From Papers to Bots

The rise of disinformation, fake news, social media bots and trolls have been broadly discussed as a major challenge for Western societies. This marks the return of the concept of propaganda, now described as "computational" and often laden with Russian connections. In this project, we propose to study and compare Soviet and post-Soviet Russian propaganda practices in two different eras: the Cold War and the present day, using our unique access to rare historical material. This will enable us to trace the transformation of Soviet propaganda from its “analogue” to “computational” form, including significant continuities and discontinuities, which would constitute a major contribution to the research field of propaganda studies as well as to understanding of the phenomenon.

This project was funded by RJ Projects at Södertörn University (Sweden) in 2022 and will be continued at the University of Zurich.